Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)

Deep shadows
create dramatic contrasts between light and dark in
this
high-resolution close-up of the martian surface.
Recorded on January 24, 2014 by the HiRISE camera onboard the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the scene
spans about 1.5 kilometers.

From our vantage point in the
Milky Way Galaxy, we see
NGC 3344 face-on.
Nearly 40,000 light-years across, the big, beautiful
spiral galaxy
is located just 20 million light-years away in the
constellation of Leo Minor.
This multi-color Hubble Space Telescope
close-up
of NGC 3344 includes remarkable details from near infrared to
ultraviolet wavelengths.

Wandering
through the constellation Sagittarius,
bright planets Mars and Saturn appeared together
in early morning skies over the
last
weeks.
They are captured in this 3 degree wide field-of-view from March 31
in a close celestial triangle with large globular
star
cluster Messier 22.

Was this flash the farthest star yet seen?
An unexpected flash of light noticed fortuitously on
Hubble Space Telescope images may prove to be not only an unusual
gravitational lensing event but also an image of a
normal star 100 times farther away than any star previously imaged individually.

One of the most spectacular solar sights is an explosive flare.
In 2011 June, the Sun unleashed somewhat impressive,
medium-sized solar flare as rotation carried
active regions
of sunpots toward the solar limb.
That...

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history,
a new light would have suddenly have appeared in the
night sky and faded after a few weeks.
Today we know this light was from a
supernova,
or exploding star,
and record the expanding debris cloud as the
Veil Nebula, a
supernova remnant.

Brush
strokes of Jupiter's
signature atmospheric bands and vortices form this
planetary
post-impressionist work of art.
The creative image
uses actual data from the Juno spacecraft's JunoCam.
To paint on the digital canvas, a image with light and dark tones was
chosen for processing and an oil-painting software filter applied.

This
bright cosmic cloud
was sculpted by stellar
winds and radiation from the hot young stars
of open cluster NGC 3324.
With dust clouds in silhouette against its glowing atomic gas, the
pocket-shaped
star-forming region actually spans about 35 light-years.
It lies some 7,500 light-years away toward the nebula rich
southern constellation
Carina.